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2020 Senate · IA

Selzer & Co. · fieldwork ended 2020-10-28 (6 days before the election) · 814 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 42% · Republican 46%

R+4.0

The certified result

Democrat 45.15% · Republican 51.74%

R+6.6

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 42 − 46 = -4.00
  2. Actual margin = 45.152 − 51.740 = -6.588
  3. Signed miss = -4.00 − (-6.588) = 2.588
  4. Absolute miss = |2.588| = 2.588

The poll overstated the Democrat by 2.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72420, race ID 6272 (538 database).